Using the news in the classroom

Discover age-appropriate, classroom-ready news stories to help primary pupils digest and make sense of unmediated information they receive on the Internet

Bring the real-world into the classroom

Discovery Education Espresso News, a key part of Discovery Education Espresso, is a unique service, produced in collaboration with ITN Productions and specifically tailored to primary schools. Espresso News gives children a safe, age-appropriate way to find out what's happening in the world using real events and footage to create lasting, high-impact learning opportunities. With over 5,000 resources, Espresso News consists of:

Daily News - a 60-second roundup of today's key stories from around the world, available from 8am every morning during term time.
Weekly News - a more in-depth news story covering interesting, curriculum-relevant stories and significant events.
News Bites - weekly bulletins for Key Stages 1 and 2, covering three or four stories that address the 'Promoting British Values' part of the SMRC curriculum. An accompanying quiz helps aid comprehension.
Fake News - a brand new collection of resources designed to raise pupils' awareness of misinformation and disinformation in the media.
Picture of the week - a quick and effective way of getting children focused on a single event, encouraging them to make predictions based on visual evidence and to make connections to prior knowledge.
Newspapers module - a collection of differentiated newspaper articles and supporting resources to help pupils identify and analyse the features of news reports and use them as a model for their own writing.
Assemblies - a collection of ready-made assemblies, which cover a range of popular issues and topics.

The variety of resources available on the news service allows teachers to infuse the news throughout the whole curriculum. Whether starting the school day with the Daily news feature, using the weekly News Bites as a launch pad to discuss current affairs, or incorporating the Assemblies into class or whole-school discussion, Discovery Education Espresso News provides powerful opportunities to bring current affairs and world events to pupils of all ages.

Meet non-fiction literacy objectives

The National Curriculum for English places considerable emphasis on pupils of all ages gaining experience of a wide range of different texts - fiction and non-fiction, written and spoken - and on them developing the comprehension skills needed to interpret these texts with confidence: identifying the main points, summarising and précising, and distinguishing fact from opinion. Espresso News, for EYFS, KS1 and KS2, provides the ideal material for working on these skills through both video and written text.

Our daily and weekly updating news resources, produced in partnership with ITN Productions, are accompanied by written transcripts and provide real-world texts on subjects of interest and relevance to pupils. They also provide a great example of standard spoken English for pupils to develop their vocabulary through listening to a high quality and variety of language.

Teach pupils to be critical consumers of the news

More than ever, it is vital that pupils of all ages are not just informed about the wider world around them but that they are capable of evaluating the trustworthiness of sources and discriminating between facts, opinions and disinformation. Espresso News provides you with the tools to engage students in thinking critically about the information they consume in the media and develop them as empowered citizens in the 21st century.

Help pupils identify 'fake news' using our Fake News bulletin featuring stories which exemplify different types of disinformation and misinformation. A companion video supports teachers by unpacking the elements of the bulletin that were false and discussing ways in which pupils can identify fake news by sense checking what they read and hear.
Tips from the professionals, a video interview with a prominent journalist discussing journalistic principles and the difference between mainstream media and online news sources.
Digital media literacy, a KS2 module helping children to develop confidence, critical understanding and resilience when navigating in an online world. Children will learn how to evaluate information sources and consider the effects of biased reporting and echo chambers. These resources are an extension to our KS2 module on Online safety, a module helping pupils to understand how the Internet works, where information comes from and the risks involved in sharing personal information.

Espresso News is available as part of a Discovery Education Espresso subscription. To get started, login to your Discovery Education account, hover over the relevant Key Stage and select 'Espresso News home' from the drop down menu.